It took me five whole months to sit down to write this post. Like pretty much every woman, I was scared to death of childbirth even before I got pregnant. Throughout pregnancy, I have prayed every single day for an easy and comfortable birthing experience – be it normal or caesarean, especially because my pain tolerance is extremely low. I have mentioned before that my body hasn’t always been the ‘strong type’ so endurance isn’t exactly my strong trait. In all honesty, I wasn’t keen on going through a vaginal delivery at all; so I did not do any kind of special preparation like starting a workout regime or food habit to facilitate it. (The internet is full of advice for that.) I would have been happy if it was a c-section but turns out, God, my baby and my doctor had other plans.
If not for exposure to stories of other women’s normal deliveries, I would continue to believe that my delivery experience was the most traumatizing experience ever. Well, don’t get me wrong, it was the most traumatizing experience of my life but now that I look back at it, I am able to count the number of ways it was actually much easier than it could have been. Apparently, things could have been way worse. So if you’re someone expecting to deliver your first baby and reading this looking for some reassurance, this might offer some. Since this is my personal account, it might sound like I’m narrating a story rather than a scientific account so please bear with me.
Detection of dilation
The first dreadful thing we have to go through is the vaginal examination that shows the doctor how close we are to delivery. This was done around two weeks before the due date for me, and surprisingly, the doctor discovered that I was already around 3cms dilated. I’d only gone for my routine weekly check-up and she declared that I could get admitted already, but since I had wanted to attend a family event the next day, she let me go and instructed me to get admitted the next day. I guess she allowed it because I showed no symptoms of going into labor anytime soon – no pain in the back or thighs, no cramps, nothing. The only apparent giveaway was the significant lessening of baby’s movements in the tummy – because it had already moved to the birthing position. I had felt the movements go down two days ago but had no idea why – I mentioned it to her with concerns but it turned out that it was because the baby was ready to be born! So other than the commonly known symptoms of labor, that’s apparently one thing to lookout for.
Walking into the labor room
Well, I obviously did not attend the family event the next day. Not because I went into labor; simply because none of my family members were confident enough to take me along in fear of sudden contractions. So I stayed home with my husband and waited it out until evening, when everyone came back and we got me admitted to the hospital. And then there was another vaginal examination (did I mention its painful but the doctor kept talking to me and made it bearable?) where she figured that I had further dilated to around 5cms and could directly be taken into the labor room.
BUT – the amazingly over-confident people that we are – asked for even further extension because, you’ll understand this if you’re Indian – we wanted the baby to be born the next day. AND my amazing doctor agreed to that too, she said we can wait until 12 AM so the delivery can be recorded for the next day. Still no traditionally known symptoms of labor. I walked around the hospital comfortably with my family admitting myself, went to the canteen for some snack, and got some final round of NST done. They asked me to be present at the labor room at around 10.30PM. But I was sent back AGAIN because it was too early to induce labor if I wanted to give birth after 12 AM. And so, at around 11PM, I walked into the labor room with my husband dropping me off at the entrance of it, swaying my shoulders as if I was getting into a dance recital and him wishing me luck as if I really was. Where my fear of normal delivery had gone, God knows.
And then on the labor bed – that half cushion-half steel setup (ugh) there was the final vaginal examination where the nurse, quite shocked, declared that I was more than 7cms dilated. Shocked because there was still ZERO symptoms of labor. She told me that while this is not supremely uncommon, most women actually start showing symptoms right around 3cms. I comfortably spent around 40 minutes chatting with her and the OB-GYN interns who had formerly told me they’d be a part of my delivery process. (Thank God for all of them.)
Doctors don’t usually show up until the very last part of the labor process. My doctor showed up a few minutes after I was put on IV fluids to break my water – by far the worst, most painful experience. I think the water breaking naturally is a blessing because when they do it manually, it feels like she’s reaching for your soul through your vagina.
And THEN it begins. I do not know if natural contractions are better than induced contractions. I do know that induced contractions are the purest form of torture. Sorry, I have no reassurance to offer here. We simply have to endure. For more than an hour, I put up an award worthy display of dramatic emotions as the interns did their best to get me inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. Contractions are basically period cramps multiplied by 100, appearing and disappearing at 60 second intervals when you’re about 9cms dilated and almost ready for labor. (Like I said, it starts much earlier for many women but the frequency varies. Towards the end, it appears at 30-60 second breaks.) The doctor came back when the nurse gave her a call and announced I was 10cms. The amount of times I yelled for her to make it stop must have made her ears bleed – but she, with all the patience in the world, told me she will – in another 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes and on and on.
The choice of epidural
Oh, the mention worthy part is that of the epidural. I had formerly read about having the choice of an epidural in a normal delivery and my doctor had told me that I can opt for it if I needed to. My sister, who had just recently delivered a baby too, had told me that taking an epidural during a normal delivery makes us unable to push the baby ourselves and that we will need the nurse’s help. I begged for an epidural, but my doctor patiently explained to me that giving an epidural this late during labor is actually pointless, as the baby would be out within a few minutes anyway. The wonderful nurse in the room sympathized with me and assured me that she would help me out with the pushing, and I remembered my sister’s words. It gave me some reassurance that even without an epidural, I would have the nurse’s help and that it might be easier.
Well, I was right to some extent, but incredibly wrong in my assumption that it would be less painful with the nurse’s help. The help is actually not a gentle push of the baby bump towards the birthing area. It is actually rapid thrusting of the baby bump from a perpendicular position, and it is almost impossible to breathe through it. My shrieks certainly would have gone beyond the labor room, but the baby was out within two minutes or so. If not for that help, it would have taken much longer. In hindsight, that pain was absolutely worth it.
Labor lasted one hour and 20 minutes for me, which is actually very short, and my doctor said it was in fact a breeze; she and the interns have seen way worse. However, that does not take away from the fact that I went through what I went through, and my personal experience is not diluted by it. Induced contractions are extremely painful, especially for someone with a low pain threshold like myself. That I went through it and survived is something I am extremely proud of.
Post labor
The hours post-labor are not as hard as labor itself, but they are a close second. Since I hadn’t had a proper dinner, I was very drained from the process and almost fainted. The nurses bring the baby to us within 15 to 20 minutes of delivery to stimulate the breastfeeding process. I was pretty much literally blind and couldn’t see anything, needing my mother and husband’s help through this process. Apparently, blurry vision and extreme shivering are common events after childbirth, alongside the traumatizing bleeding.
But for me, the hardest part was over. Breastfeeding and bleeding through it is hard, yes, but not painful. Postpartum is a journey on its own, and I will possibly write a post about it some other day; this was specifically about labor. I promised some reassurance for first-time pregnant women at the beginning, and I must have sounded quite the opposite, but here is my current understanding: there is no substitute for the pain women go through during vaginal delivery. There are some extremely lucky women in the world who deliver with zero pain, and my understanding is that, more than delivery-related workouts or foods that facilitate normal delivery, it’s the mindset that makes the delivery easy or difficult. Though I was initially extremely scared about vaginal delivery, my doctor, the nurse, and the interns in the labor room provided a whole lot of reassurance that helped me get through. I think the best we can hope for is exactly that: good people around us when we go through the process, and a short labor. Because once you get into the labor room and the process begins, the only way out is through.
And no, I will certainly not say that you will forget everything once you hold the baby in your arms – that only happens in movies and possibly in men’s imaginations. For me, the proper trauma of childbirth lasted precisely 10 days. But I have learned that it is not something to be dead scared of. We are much stronger than we assume ourselves to be.
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